Subnational Budget Watch in Croatia: Is Anybody There?

This paper is about the supervisory and monitoring role of the central government and general public over local government units in Croatia. The analysis presents the legal background and present situation regarding budget processes, their openness, and transparency. Since most studies in Croatia were done for the central government so far, we conducted a survey to analyze the openness of budget processes and mechanisms of monitoring and control at the level of local government units. The main finding shows that the lack of institutional and legal framework for a supervisory and control environment causes the absence of active central government and public involvement in the local government units’ activities and, in addition, creates an obstacle for their further development. The author argues that the supervision and monitoring functions are imperative if the government wants to improve the decision-making process and to increase public confidence in government as well as to increase public participation in budget processes to achieve better transparency. Since it is not easy to develop supervisory and monitoring functions and to build the related structures, a number of recommendations, including a working plan and roadmap, are offered.